William Morris's The Wood Beyond The World: The Victorian World vs. The Mythic Eternities

Authors

Clarence Wolfshohl

Artists and Illustrations Included in This Record

First Artist
John Pivovarnick
First Illustration
the Mountains of Mordor

Second Artist
Valerie Protopapas

Abstract

Analysis of the character of the maiden in The Wood Beyond the World. Notes that as a woman both chaste and possessed of wizardly powers—like her decidedly unchaste counterpart, the Mistress—she engenders a degree of tension and uncertainty until the end of the novel. Sees Morris’s attitudes toward sex and society in terms of his Victorian background.